What was that?!
Today’s choppy, misdirectional tape felt a 2 of Spades was shown on the flop. At least the 2 wasn’t a diamond.
APOL sold off on a report. Managed to hold 80. DV and STRA followed to the red, but APEI and CPLA remained green. Still too early to short. Will buy the next dip.
ISRG reversed at 104.03. That’s a good stop point if we decide to short here.
Ags/Ferts for strong today. TNH up 7.85%, getting closer to the 110 range. Currently at 106.49. Stock is heavily shorted.
SRS showed bearish signs today. Market at -90 was the only way it was green. Closed down nearly -6% close to the lows (61.03) despite red Dow and slightly green SPX. SRS does not work well in mixed markets.
Gold showed some bearish signs. Shorted EGO based on GG rally back to the downward channel (use 12-day)
AFAM rallied right up to yesterday’s lows. Consolidating here. Not ready to re-short.
Solars got quietly and brutally hit. JASO and SOL both down -9%
AAPL looked scary, but later bounced 86.35 creating an intraday double bottom. Rallied up to yesterday’s close. Again, a low and tight range. Nasdaq is a short with AAPL under 86.35.
Banks continued to fall, but today didn’t take too much of the market down. ie, BAC.
Oil moved up a little. CLR, HK, GMXR up about 4%. Airlines down nominally.
… we probably will continue to be “flat” and/or “choppy” for a while. The market is rangebound. Better to wait to see the flop first before making big moves. I plan to play the intraday directions. Today was a day where there was none! Very tricky day today. Yikes! Given a certain direction I prefer to short on day trades. If not, then I think it’s a good idea to just hold your aces and stay mostly cash. If I remember correctly, the market has had 6 straight red days on the Dow and NDX, and 5 on the SPX… ? Something like that. Regardless, it’s not a good time to enter new shorts here, plus I had Vix 45-47 as a cover point. I probably won’t get too aggressive or make much trades until the Vix is in the 47-50 area.
-gio-
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I’m not following you on SRS Gio. Seems like its working fine to me with IYR up 3% and SRS down 6%. It’s doing exactly as it should since it isn’t tied to the Dow or the SPX. Now Strength in IYR being bearish for SRS is another case entirely.
“Given a certain direction I prefer to short on day trades.”
Excuse my ignorance, as I am still learning, but how would you be short on day trade? Selling calls? Buying puts? Fly said once he does not buy puts but is short lots of stocks, does he sell naked calls?
Thanks for the insight!
APOL got hit by http://www.citronresearch.com/ that site is great if you catch the post early and short away!
DEtrade,
Short individual stocks that are breaking down or fade their rallies, or go long inverse ETFs like QID, SDS & DXD. Or short stock index futures or buy puts.
Lots of ways to short intraday.
MarketRaider: I think Gio’s point was not how SRS is doing versus its index, but how it is doing versus the market.
To put his point in more direct terms, CRE REITs showed relative strength today.
“Short individual stocks that are breaking down”
…by selling calls?
fading the rallies would mean you hold stocks and you are just turning from long to short and decreasing the position size, right?
I got the puts and inverse ETFs thing.
Thanks Again.
Fading rallies mean you short on a reversal of a rally. I prefer to short, meaning if the market moves, it will move faster on the downside than the upside. Also, if the market moves up, then the imbalance in the inverse ETFs will move down faster than going long a long ETF.
@OttNott … you are correct.
DEtrade,
Short stocks by selling them short. Let’s say AAPL has just rallied $5 and looks like it is stalling and rolling over. To short, you just hit the sell button, fill in the number of shares, then hit send.
If your broker has shares available for shorting, then your order will be filled. As the price drops, your profit grows. To exit the trade, just buy the same number of shares that you sold. The difference between the sell price and buy price is your profit.
If you are just beginning, though, the easiest way to “go short” is to short an index through an inverse ETF. I don’t recommend that a beginning trader start shorting stocks. Get comfortable and profitable on the long side, then and only then begin exploring the magical allure and profitability of the dark side.
I myself am quite the beginner, 3 yrs, and I took the advice to learn the long side first, and glad I did, but when I started buying puts and inverses (DUG…whoooohoooo)everything changed. Still am not comfortable borrowing to short. maybe next year.
Nice watch Gio, and how about posting some more of that Hawaiian music?
Everything traded like SRS today. Crap. I documented my day of uselessness. Selloff, rally, selloff, rally, selloff, rally, selloff kinda.
Tight range volatility equals big break in one direction. I’m betting up.